


Destiny Isn't Something We Look For (And Neither Is Love)

by prairiecrow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avengers Lunch, Captain America Is Supposed To Be The Best Part Of Steve, Dark Steve Rogers, Fantasy of Rough Sex, Illicit Attraction, Internalized Homophobia, Loki is a bastard, M/M, Manipulative Loki, Oblivious Tony Stark, Partial Mind Control, Road Trip, Steve Angst, Steve Has Issues, Steve Knows About Technology, Steve Might Be Just a Bit of a Sadist, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve is Obsessing, Tony Can't Sing, Tony is shameless, Turned On By Fighting, Unrequited Love, Waking Dreams, except when he isn't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Let me tell you a story about love. It's not a love story, because there's no gorgeous dame being romanced by a tall, dark and handsome leading man, and it doesn't have soft lighting and a soundtrack full of soaring violins, but it's still about the ways that two people can get all tangled up with each other before they even realize it, and the ways they can make each other fly — and the ways they can bring each other crashing down to Earth in bursts of blood and fire."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> For teljhin, and all the Faithful Readers who've wanted to see me tackle a straight Tony/Steve story. :)

Let me tell you a story about love. It's not a love story, because there's no gorgeous dame being romanced by a tall, dark and handsome leading man, and it doesn't have soft lighting and a soundtrack full of soaring violins, but it's still about the ways that two people can get all tangled up with each other before they even realize it, and the ways they can make each other fly — and the ways they can bring each other crashing down to Earth in bursts of blood and fire. 

The old movies — the ones I remember best, anyway — talk about love as if it's something preordained. As if two people go through this crazy world alone, maybe not even knowing that there's someone out there meant just for them, but then they meet and everything suddenly makes sense. Well, I'm here to tell you that sometimes there _is_ someone out there just for you, but when you meet them there's a damned good chance that suddenly things will make less sense than they've ever made before: in fact, that they'll make no sense whatsoever when you're around that person and you'll drive yourself half-crazy trying to figure out why. 

That your other half is out there, waiting for you and not knowing it, and the only reason _you_ know it is because when you see them your internal compass suddenly spins wildly out of control. They're your own personal Bermuda Triangle, and getting too close to them without a good clear view of the constellations can easily get you badly lost — or maybe even killed. 

So, let me tell you a story about love — and fear, and anger, and Destiny and death and hope and despair, and how Tony Stark is a whirlwind of pure Chaos in expensive suits and dirty muscle shirts and a smile that can light up a room.  

And how he nearly destroyed Captain America before he even knew what the hell he was doing. 


	2. Anywhere Near Deep Enough

I'll never forget the first time I saw him walk into a room without his armour on: swaggering stride, obnoxiously loud tie (and I thought to myself, _What kind of macho guy wears that pattern? Seriously?_ ), sartorial little beard-and-moustache combination that practically screamed _Look at me, I'm a fashion plate!_ Every part of him was tailor-made to draw attention, so I wasn't exactly surprised when he started swanning around like Errol Flynn in _Captain Blood_ , smacking the Norse God on the shoulder with a condescending smirk and offering loud opinions on a whole lot of shit that wasn't even his business. 

In other words, showing off like a puffed-up little Bantam rooster strutting into a barnyard and crowing at everybody in the place. It wasn't just arrogant and annoying — it was downright disrespectful to the people he was supposedly there to help. He couldn't even keep his lips zipped around Bruce Banner, poking his big fat stick into a wound that was obviously pretty damned tender. It was everything I could do to keep my mouth shut and resist the urge to tell him to sit down and clam up in no uncertain terms…

But I guess even then I was smart enough to recognize a force of nature when I saw it. I might as well have tried to lay down the law to an oncoming cyclone, because even without the red-and-gold tin can to back him up he carried himself like a guy who didn't give a flying damn what anybody else thought. If I'd told him he was being a colossal asshole, he would have just laughed in my face and carried on.

I'd made the mistake of thinking the power suit was the source of his insane levels of confidence. But as he sauntered past me on his way to shake Banner's hand, the faint scent of some sweetly musky aftershave drifted over me in his wake… 

… and I could definitely smell something else underneath it. Something a whole lot warmer, maybe even soft — or hard, to the right touch. That's the downside to having serum-enhanced senses, because for a split second it was like he'd walked by me buck-ass naked, all glowing skin and shamelessness, and I'd be lying if I tried to claim that certain parts of me didn't start to sit up and take notice. Which was a nasty surprise, because I'd thought I'd taken care of those tendencies about seventy-four years ago. 

Not much point, after all, in wanting things you could never have.

But maybe even at that moment, trapped in the modern age with someone I was already pretty sure I couldn't stand, something inside me recognized that in this case _wanting_ wasn't necessarily terribly far from _having_ after all. 

Maybe part of me recognized that wanting to smack somebody and wanting to kiss them senseless didn't have to be mutually exclusive. 

And maybe I stuffed those feelings so far down inside me that they'd never see the light of day again, except possibly in China. 

If I'd been half the strategic genius everybody assumes Captain America to be, I would have locked them in a rocket ship and fired them off to the moon. But plain ol' Steve Rogers isn't always that bright, and it turned out the pit of my subconscious wasn't a prison anywhere near deep enough to matter when it came to Tony "I'm The Best There Ever Was And I'll Never Let Your Forget It!" Stark. 

Because another part of me, the part that looks at people and evaluates their combat readiness in five seconds flat, was telling me loud and clear that this was a guy who could give me a run for my money — and then some.


	3. A Man In Uniform

Fury had set all kinds of things in motion when Loki and his staff were captured, but for me it was largely a case of "hurry up and wait": Banner and Stark were the scientific whiz kids, Agent Romanov was off Heaven knew where, and now that Loki was locked up there wasn't much for me to do except walk around the Helicarrier looking like I'd just stepped out of a WWII recruitment poster. Not that I minded doing that: I was used to it, and in the midst of all that aggressive modernity it actually felt sort of comforting to do something so simple and so familiar. 

Besides, the intel suggested that Loki had created his own little gang, and if those monkeys really _could_ fly an attack might come at any moment. I could fight in street clothes just as well as I could in a Kevlar-panelled uniform, but the uniform was for other people as much as it was for me, or more. It was a visual battle-cry, a rallying point, a reminder that they had a living symbol fighting on their side. I'd seen first-hand how it gave the troops courage in the field, and even this new Agent Coulson-inspired version already felt as much a part of me as my vibranium shield.

Part of me or not, there were days when I'd hated the red-white-and-blue I wore, because folks kept looking at _it_ and not at _me_. But there were other days when I'd wanted it wrapped around me three times over because it was the best possible armour a guy could have: it turned me into Captain America instead of Steve Rogers, the little guy from Brooklyn who still lived inside the tower of well-muscled strength Dr. Erskine had created. On those days, the uniform hid all sorts of things…

… like today, for example. Today it was concealing a persistent stiffness in my groin, because I couldn't stop thinking about Tony Stark and the way he'd smelled, male and brazen and good enough to bury my face in and just _breathe_.

Captain America would never have _those_ kinds of thoughts. Dirty, secret thoughts — thoughts that would have gotten him drummed out of the US Army with a dishonourable discharge plus a dose of tar and feathers to go along with it. Captain America wouldn't have wanted to reach out and grab Stark and pull him into my lap, to hold him there while he struggled and squawked, to trap both his wrists in a grip he couldn't twist free of until he realized what was what… and then to _really_ get down to business.

Captain America wouldn't have shoved him face-down right there on the Main Deck floor and stripped his expensive dress pants and underwear down around his knees with one cloth-ripping tug, and then —

And then…

The stiffness became positive discomfort, trapped against the uniform's codpiece — but there was something good about it too, something dark and forbidden. Steve Rogers, wrapped in the uniform, broke out in a cold sweat and walked a little bit faster down a busy corridor, keeping his eyes up and focussed on some point ahead of him, deliberately not meeting anybody's gaze. Steve Rogers knew what was right — and he definitely knew what was wrong. 

Wanting to do… those things? Unquestionably very _very_ wrong. In the past, Steve Rogers — a former scrawny runt who sometimes had some uncomfortably deviant thoughts — had always been able to hold Captain America up as a shield against the parts of his mind that were still as diseased as his body had once been, because Captain America was the best and brightest part of himself, the part that stood for truth and justice and power used in service to all that was Right.

Captain America had wanted a beautiful dame named Peggy Carter — had even gotten to kiss her, in fact. Captain America had made a date to go dancing with her, even if he'd ended up missing it by about seventy years. 

Captain America didn't want to hold down guys he'd just met, especially a guy he would have cheerfully punched through the wall of a quinjet not ninety minutes earlier, and use his big serum-enhanced cock to punish them for being… okay, for just _being_. 

That was all kinds of wrong —

— but the wrongness didn't change the fact that for once, Captain America and Steve Rogers were in perfect agreement about who I wanted to get into bed with.

I held out for all of about half an hour before I knew I had to see him again, and headed for Lab 24-C ready to take any excuse to tear him a new one — in the only way allowed, with words that would hopefully flay him to the bone.


	4. Lessons To Be Learned

I should've known better. I expected to walk into that lab in full Command Mode and have them both knuckle under: Banner seemed pretty timid by nature, and yeah, he could barely even meet my eyes, but Stark…

"Hey!" Dear God, had he just _shocked_ the guy who was capable of turning into the Hulk? "Are you nuts?"

Stark took one look at me and got that smirk on his face that I was already starting to hate. Most men would straighten up and fly right when Captain America told them they were being idiots and ordered them to cut that shit out _right now_ , but all Stark did put on an even bigger swagger as he walked around the lab, posing himself like an actor on the Broadway stage. Most men wouldn't have the stones to go chest-to-chest with America's original superhero and serve up a big helping of backtalk, but Stark didn't even have enough sense to stand to attention while he did it: he just slouched defiantly in his t-shirt and worn bluejeans, and munched blueberries from a foil bag, and _offered me some_ , for God's sake, what kind of idiot offered food to his enemy as if they were friends? 

An idiot who knew exactly what he was doing, that's what. An idiot who knew how to slap a guy in the face and flip him the bird without raising a finger, although the spark that gleamed in Stark's eyes when they looked directly into mine — oh yeah, he was ready to go, all he was waiting for was a good excuse. I could have wiped the floor with him, me in Kevlar body armour and him in gear a helluva lot more suitable for watching a summer baseball game than working at a military outpost, but did he care? Nope, no fucks were given by Anthony Edward Stark, who kept looking at me like I was the punchline to a joke only he could hear. 

I wanted to make him care. I wanted to grab the front of that scruffy t-shirt and pick him up and slam him into the nearest wall; I wanted to shake him hard enough to rattle his teeth in his skull and wipe that smirk off his mug; I wanted to kiss him until his mouth was bloody and breathless, until he was gasping and clawing at my chest and belly, until he was begging for mercy — 

And then — _then_ maybe he'd understand that you didn't fuck around with Captain America, or Steve Rogers for that matter… 

Underneath I was a seething mess, locked in a pitched battle with an animal that wanted to grapple the man in front of me to the floor. Topside, though? All those years of command experience kept things cool — relatively. "I think Loki's trying to wind us up." I glanced away, toward Banner, then back to Stark, into those shamelessly mocking eyes. "He means to start a war, and if we don't stay focussed, he'll succeed."

Focus. Stark sure could use some training in that, I mused. Part of me was keeping track of the conversation, trying to weave these two separate strands into the larger fabric of command, but that thing dwelling deeper and darker was considering ways to make Stark fall in line. Based on what I'd seen of him, he'd need more than one lesson to make it stick: I would have been more than happy to teach him, as many times as it took, and oh, part of me was hoping he'd be a really slow learner — 

"Following has never been my style," Stark drawled, popping another few blueberries into his mouth, and the pulse of hot blood in my core hummed: _Oh baby, but I could teach you, just give me one night in a room where you can't get away_ — 

— except I _couldn't_. Even if Banner hadn't been there, watching us as warily as if we were two live hand grenades with an unknown count of seconds left to detonation, you didn't just go around assaulting people you were supposed to be working with. You didn't, no matter how much your hands itched to come to grips with them — no matter how much you wanted to find out if their beard would rasp just right, right _there_ , when you buried your hand in their hair and clenched your fingers tight and forced their head down…

That was the thought that did it. That was the thought that broke the fever: I stared at Stark, another volley of verbal fire already on the tip of my tongue in response to his latest insult, then swallowed it down and locked it up tight. 

"Steve," Banner was saying tentatively, "tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" 

I looked Stark up and down one final time — wanting to tear him open, unable even to let a trace of a snarl crack through the facade of command, oh yeah, there was all kinds of funky going on here — and turned away. "Just find the Cube," I ordered: calm, even, and reasonable. Good.

Captain America was, after all, the epitome of all that was Just and Virtuous.

As for the rest of me... well, I couldn't afford to let myself think that maybe, as I disengaged, Stark looked just a little bit disappointed that our confrontation was over so soon. 


	5. Be Careful What You Wish For

_Things aren't always what they seem:_ my Ma, God rest her soul, had told me so many a time. And over eighty years later her wisdom still held true, even if her little boy had been too caught up in bickering and explosions to remember her good advice.

Turned out Fury had been lying about a lot of things. 

Turned out Loki had been messing with our minds — that all he needed was one "in", a few words spoken in a guy's ear, and he could even make Captain America dance like a puppet on a string. 

It wasn't until after he'd killed Agent Coulson and made a run for it, taking that damned sceptre with him, that we all got our heads screwed on straight again and realized the game he'd been playing — sure, he hadn't gotten his hooks into most of us the way he'd managed to tie up Barton, but he'd been in there all right, a snake curled around the base of our brains, hissing and twisting and biting. He'd brought out the animal in us all, woken up the worst we could be and turned it loose — 

— or he'd tried to, anyway. In the end I hadn't grabbed Tony Stark and thrown him against the nearest wall and kissed him bloody, and Stark hadn't put on the Iron Man suit and done his level best to turn me into hamburger, and Thor hadn't smashed Fury into the floor with that crazy hammer of his, and Banner… okay, Banner _had_ lost it, but the guy was operating under a worse handicap than all the rest of us put together. I made damned sure he knew afterwards that none of us blamed him for that…

… and then I went and found Stark again — a tough little guy standing near the place where a friend had been killed in action, all hard edges and bitter haunted eyes. As soon as I saw him I knew that Loki's sex-fever was gone, that I could handle him now, treat him like anybody else I disagreed with and had to work with anyway —

— sure I could. No problem. He was just another civilian with an ego way too big for his britches, and as soon as the Loki situation was resolved I'd be happy to see the back side of him.

_Things aren't always what they seem, Stevie…_

He looked smaller now, and much rougher around the edges. His voice was hoarse, his eyes too bright — but inside… inside he was still on fire. I could see it, and with every step we took around each other, closer and further away and closer again, I could f _eel_ it too: dark and obsessive, unquenchable, glowing as hot as molten iron in the forge.

Turned out, too, that Tony Stark had a heart under all that flash and guff. Watching him, I wondered if he realized that he wasn't hiding it as well as he probably wanted to — if he knew that he looked so tired, or that the gleam in his eyes was so obviously unshed tears. I wondered if he would even care, if I spoke up and told him. 

I didn't tell him. We didn't know each other, after all: we weren't even on good terms, much less friends, and that kind of thing isn't something you said to a stranger.

Not even a stranger who wore his heart on his sleeve, strutting and flashing and raging and grieving. Not even a stranger who wasn't afraid to look me in the eyes and pour himself out like a glass of wine I didn't dare touch, because it was just as likely to poison me as it was to quench my thirst, even if he hadn't had a girlfriend waiting in the wings. 

I didn't tell him that I wanted to close the distance between us, either — that I wanted to reach out and put my hand on his shoulder and… do what, exactly? Tell him that everything was going to be okay? Lean in enough to get a good dose of his scent again, because even under the tang of sweat and exhaustion and misery he still smelled criminally good, musky and healthy and male… 

… close enough to pull him into my arms, all that blaze and tension coiled up against me, right on the point of — 

My Ma had another favourite saying: _Be careful what you wish for, because you might just wind up getting it._ But looking at Stark as he stopped mid-sentence and stood staring into mid-air, his genius mind almost audibly racing, I saw the stubble on his cheek and the smears of dirt on his skin and I thought: _I'd take him, every last bit of him, in a New York minute._

As he bolted from the room without a backward glance, I stared after him and wondered if Loki had planned this too — and if he had, just what the would-be God was counting on me doing, or _not_ doing, next.


	6. And Death Shall Have No Dominion

When Thor had ripped off Iron Man's faceplate and thrown it away like so much useless junk, I took one look at Tony Stark's dead chest light and still features and knew it was over even before I leaned in to hear silence at his lips.

_He was dead._ He'd given up his life so that everybody else, all the people I'd thought he held in contempt because they were so much _less_ than him — not as rich, not as smart, not as handsome — could go on living. 

Turns out he'd made the sacrifice play after all, and now —

— now those words I'd thrown at him in anger and spite were coming back to bite me, hard. I wanted to pick him up and shake him until he woke up again. I wanted to hit him until his eyes fluttered open and he started to breathe, a sharp shallow inhalation over full lips bruised and battered. I wanted to kiss him, because wasn't that what always worked in fairy tales?

But this wasn't a fairy tale. It wasn't a dream, or a nightmare. It was reality, and all I could do was stare while the familiar irrevocability of Death crept into my heart and tried to strangle every beat. 

How many times had I survived while others died around me? How many times had I buried friends, when there was a body to bury? Too many, but this one felt worse than all the rest of them put together.

Faced with the horror of the now, my mind sprinted ahead to the future. Stark would probably have a prince's funeral — no, a _king's_ funeral, his casket adorned in the American flag and surrounded by whole fields of hothouse roses, his picture wept over by women from one end of this great country to the other. The whole world would mourn the loss of Iron Man and the passing of the genius who'd made the hero possible, and me…

Oh, I'd be there, all right, as the face of American patriotism: the upright uniform of Captain America, with no trace of the man who suffered and bled behind the mask. Because in the end, what _had_ I been to Stark, anyway? A comrade in battle, sure, but I couldn't even pretend to have called myself his friend, no matter how much I'd longed to reach out and touch his lips when those dark eyes had been open and alight with the fire of challenge, when I'd wanted to whisper words in his ear that I couldn't even begin to guess at, and now would never —

The Hulk's bellow split the pale sky and obviously caught Death by surprise, because He let Stark go and fled into the shadows where He belonged. And Stark's startled gaze, falling on me leaning over him, was quickly followed by the most ironic phrase possible under the circumstances: "Please tell me nobody kissed me!"

For an instant the relief was so potent, so intoxicating, that I felt myself getting lightheaded. I had to sit back from him and look around at the devastation surrounding us, just to get my head back into the present again.

_He's alive, he's —_

"We won," I said, without the slightest concept of what I'd actually lost when Death surrendered His prize and left me to collect the spoils of battle. 


	7. Victory and Venom

We'd won — but in any armed conflict, winning is just the start. Winners get stuck with the clean-up after a war, and five square blocks of the Big Apple had been turned into a mass of shattered ruins littered with alien corpses: not our job, thank God, but we still had to go up to the top of Stark Tower and collect Loki, who was actually smart enough to realize that everything was over as far as his bid to conquer the planet was concerned. 

The look Stark gave the Asgardian, though, when Loki asked for a drink… glancing at him sidelong, I caught a trace of a smile on his bearded face, as if to say: _Huh. You might be a homicidal maniac who just tried to subdue the entire human race, but you've got style, kiddo_ — and Tony Stark was all about style, right?

An hour ago, that expression on Stark's face would have just made me even more annoyed with everything he stood for. Now, with the image of his body tumbling out of the portal and plunging back to Earth burned into my mind, I had a much better idea of exactly what he _did_ stand for — and the flash and dash was only one side of it, almost admirable now that I'd gotten a glimpse of the heart that beat beneath the glowing circle set into his chest.

Did I say _almost_? And _admirable_? I only looked sideways at his smile for a fraction of a second, but by the time I looked away again I knew that the words I really had in mind were _definitely_ and _attractive_. 

Loki looked up into my eyes, and damned if I didn't see a spark of wicked glee flash behind his subdued mask, as if he was still inside my head and knew every —

A wash of ice water flowed over my spine. _He couldn't —_

_— could he?_

Then Thor was reaching down to pick Loki up by his elaborate collar and haul him to his feet, and it was time for me to step forward and declaim: "Loki Laufeyson, you are under arrest for crimes against the people and the government of the United States of America. You will be restrained and immediately conducted to a secure facility, where you'll be —"

"He is _my_ brother," Thor protested.

I met his gaze squarely. "Who's guilty of reducing a significant portion of New York City to —"

"He is not subject to your Earthly justice." The glower between those blond eyebrows suggested a thunderstorm about to break. "His crimes are of a much grander —"

I took a deliberate step forward and stiffened the line of my shoulders inside my uniform, keenly aware of Stark's dark eyes watching our confrontation — an audience that, paradoxically, made me feel more aggressive and somehow more _male_ than ever before. "An unprovoked attack on an American city is plenty grand enough for —"

Thor's voice rose in volume. "He is an Asgardian —"

I matched it. "In the jurisdiction of the American —"

"Now now, boys," Stark piped up, and I could hear the cheeky grin in his voice. "I'm sure there's plenty of him to go around — but the fact remains, we can't just leave him sitting up here drinking my rum while we go grab a well-deserved post-battle lunch. Guy's gotta be secured somehow."

For a beat Thor and I continued to stare at each other; then Thor's gaze slid sideways to Stark, as if considering his proposal, before returning to me again. I nodded, because Stark was exactly right. Thor nodded back and unclipped the large hammer from his belt. "Mjolnir will hold him, until we are ready to deal with him at our leisure."

"Please," Loki said faintly, "I'd much rather be taken into Human custody and put in a —"

Thor pulled him away from the stairs and dropped him onto the floor — he sprawled full-length, looking vaguely scandalized — then leaned in to place the hammer in the dead centre of his slender chest. Loki gasped, and squirmed, and reached up to pull at the shaft to absolutely no effect. Clearly he could still breathe, but equally clearly he wasn't going anywhere any time soon.

The Hulk huffed rude laughter. Barton smiled thinly. Romanov nodded her satisfaction. And Stark's grin lit up the entire room. "Aces!" He clapped his armoured hands together. "JARVIS? Unzip me." The Iron Man suit started to shift and retract from his limbs, winding up in a neat gleaming bundle on the floor behind him while leaving him both smaller and somehow even sturdier in its wake: the cloth and flesh beneath the steel, casual and rumpled and bruised, so warm and flushed and vitally alive that I had to clench my hand into a fist to resist the nearly overwhelming urge to reach out and touch it. "So! Who's up for shawarma?"

His brown eyes danced with a vibrant gleam as he looked around at us all, bright enough to pull me in and make me lose my bearings forever. The pull was so sudden and so powerful that I stared at him helplessly, so — yeah, okay, _enchanted_ was the word — that for a couple of seconds I didn't even care if he noticed.

From the floor, Loki choked out a tiny bitter cough of laughter, and when I glanced down at him the fire of malice was burning fiercely in those wide unblinking eyes, as green as distilled snake's venom. Meeting his gaze, I felt their poison running hot in my every vein: as secret, cunning, and obsessive as its source.

And a voice of doubt whispered in my ear: _Had_ we won, after all?


	8. Never Say Never

Turned out Stark knew what he was talking about: the shawarma tasted great, even if I was so tired that I knew I wasn't appreciating it half as much as I should have. The silence that settled on us all during lunch was actually better than the food — it was calm, companionable, the kind of silence that exists between people who've lived through some momentous experience and know that they survived it by working together. Picking at my plate of food, listening to that wordless hum of shared exhaustion, I realized that I'd finally found a team again, so many decades after the Howling Commandos — and for the first time in months, I felt like I'd come home.

I took a bite, glanced up — and caught Stark looking back at me. His lips, so warm and red, quirked in a wry smile, and he nodded fractionally, as if to say: _Yeah, buddy, I see you too. I know who you are now. And I wouldn't mind seeing more of you, if you decide you want to get to know me better…_

A flush of heat filled my cheeks and I dropped my gaze real quick, pretending to be fascinated by the bread-wrapped meat in my hand. To my right, Clint snorted softly and Natasha gave him a sharp sidelong glance — God damned secret agents, too observant by half, but there was no way they could see inside my head, was there? Or inside my heart, so strong and sure after the serum, now beating faster with a traitorous little flutter? Or lower, under the edge of the table, where the armoured crotchpiece of my uniform was barely concealing —

"Cheer up, Cap!" Stark's voice was low and rough, lazy, somehow more velvety and… almost fond? "We won, remember?"

"Yeah." I'd just saved New York City, I'd fought and killed squadrons of vicious alien soldiers without a qualm, but I couldn't make myself meet his darkly piercing eyes. "At the cost of millions of dollars in property damage and God knows how many lives."

Even without looking directly at him, I was still aware of the eloquent shrug of sturdy shoulders under his ratty t-shirt. "Property can be replaced and rebuilt. The people… yeah, that sucks, but if Loki's little army had gotten past us it would've been a helluva lot worse. I'm still counting this as a win for the good guys."

Bruce, who'd been looking distinctly troubled the whole time we'd been eating, spoke up quietly: "You think we're the good guys?"

I dared a glance up. Stark was smiling at him so warmly that a mean little hook of — what, _jealousy_ now? — gouged into my guts and twisted hard. "Good enough, Big Guy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we _save the fucking planet?_ Isn't that what heroes do?"

Thor, who'd already gone through three plates of shawarma with fries and four huge plastic cups of Pepsi, raised the most recent one in salute. "You have all earned a place in Valhalla this day, my friends! Anthony is right: your valour will live in song and story as long as your race endures."

Delighted, Stark stabbed a gleeful finger at Thor's broad chest. "See? _That's_ what I'm talking about! Song and story, not to mention documentaries and made-for-TV specials and our own issue of _People_ magazine!" His twinkling eyes darted to me, full of wicked mischief. "Who knows, Stevie-boy — they might even dust off "The Star Spangled Man With A Plan"! And this time they'll make it into a hit music video!" A glance toward the ceiling, dramatically calculating. "I'm seeing… Lady Gaga, naked except for some strategically placed sparklers, straddling a replica of your big manly shield —" He sat up straighter on his plastic chair and spread his thighs as if riding a horse, bracing both hands on the edge of his chair seat. "— and belting it out while a bunch of Playboy models wearing red-white-and-blue body paint form a writhing American flag in the background. Sound reasonable?"

Bruce was wincing, looking at Stark out of the corners of his eyes — but he was also fighting a grin, and not exactly winning the battle. Natasha and Clint were regarding him as if they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing — or rather, as if they _could_ believe it, in fact had probably expected it, but still couldn't resist watching the show. Thor's blond eyebrows were quirked in amusement, along with a healthy dose of puzzlement because he was even further from getting the references than I was, and when Stark started rock up and down, throwing his head back to deliver the opening line of the jingle in an off-key moan, everybody's eyebrows headed toward the ceiling —

_"Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way…?"_

— including mine, because he was so vibrant and playful and _alive_ —

_a red speck in the sky, falling full tilt, and the sickening clench around my heart when I realized he wasn't stopping, he wasn't going to stop, he was going to hit the ground like a ton of bricks_

_"Who vows to fight like a man for what's right, night and day…?"_

— so ridiculous, grinding down onto a cheap chair, so self-confident and irreverent and shameless — 

_he'd done it, he'd saved us all, and now he was going to pay the ultimate price_

_"Who will campaign door to door for America —"_

— so _brazen_ that my dick was suddenly convinced that it wasn't a chair he was riding, down and up and down again, thighs open and head thrown back, hot and clenching and so _tight_ — 

_and there wasn't a damned thing Captain America could do to stop it_

_"Carry the flag shore to shore for America —"_

— with his wrists twisted together at the small of his back, imprisoned in one of my hands, trying to pull free but I wouldn't let him go, I'd _never_ let him go —

_and Steve Rogers could only cry when it was over, somewhere dark and alone, some secret place where nobody would accuse him of being a filthy little pervert_

_"From Hoboken to Spokane, the Star Spangled Man With A —!"_

I stumbled to my feet, my whole body burning hot, food and drink forgotten, muttering something about going to the bathroom before hightailing it toward the back of the grimy little restaurant, pursued by Stark's gleeful howl of laughter and the concerned eyes of the rest of the team.

_My team._

And God help me, _he_ was an integral part of it, his membership paid for with the blood he'd shed and those terrible hollow seconds when his irrepressible heart had stopped beating, maybe forever.

I slammed through into the tiny men's washroom, pressed the button lock on the door with a shaking hand, slumped my shoulder against it, and tried to remember how to breath.

Beyond the door, I heard Bruce's reproachful murmur — _"Tony…"_ — and Tony's protest, much louder — _"What? He just didn't like my singing!"_

I pressed my forehead and my right fist to the sage-green door, as if shoring it up against an attack. "Never!" I swore, as breathlessly as if asthma was binding my lungs all over again. "Never…"

But was it _Never let him get that close_ , or _Never let him go?_


	9. Persistence of Memory

After the first lunch, after the reports to SHIELD and Loki getting wrapped up and taken back to his home dimension, I got on the motorcycle I'd bought before the whole mess started and went on the road. I'd been intending to see the new version of America for a while, but Fury had ordered me to stick close to home — and home was still New York City… but after the Chitauri incident he indicated that if I wanted to take a short vacation he'd turn a blind eye, so I got while the getting was good.

In some ways, America hadn't changed at all: there were still small towns, still Mom-and-Pop grocery stores, still kids playing in playgrounds and families eating picnics in parks… but in other ways it was like landing on an alien planet. The big "chain" stores were new, and somehow demoralizing even when seen from the freeway; the skies were criss-crossed by the contrails of jet planes; both women and men showed a lot more skin than I was used to, and everybody seemed to have one ear glued to a cell phone. I put a lot of miles behind me, from NYC through Pennsylvania to Cleveland, Toledo, and finally Chicago, but every one of those miles just made me feel more like a stranger in a strange land, a refugee who'd finally come home only to discover that the world he'd expected to find was long dead and buried. 

And no matter where I went, or how fast, I couldn't shake the feeling that Tony Stark was following me.

He probably was — or his super-intelligent computer system was, anyway — because I knew that the cell phone I carried in my inside jacket pocket "in case of emergencies" was tied into the GPS grid just like all the rest. Hell, JARVIS would be able to provide his master with detailed satellite photographs, if Tony asked for them… and it was kind of funny, and a little bit scary, to think that maybe I mattered enough to rate that kind of eye-in-the-sky spying from anybody other than SHIELD. Funny, scary, and enough to make something in my gut flutter giddily: _Is he watching me? Do I really matter enough to merit the attention of the great and powerful Tony Stark?_  

I tried to shake the thought with every mile, but it kept catching up with me and sinking its teeth into the back of my neck and shaking me, sometimes, until I could barely breathe.

Nights were the worst. Off the busy roar of the freeways, holed up in some quiet motel room, it was just me, whatever pap was on the TV, and my thoughts — which I would have lined up against a wall and shot for traitorous action if I could. But I couldn't, so I'd lie on the neatly made bed with my head propped up on some pillows, staring at whatever was dancing across the screen without really seeing it while a whole different movie played in my head: a rakish sweep of black hair, brown eyes blazing with barely contained contempt or gleaming with unrepentant mischief, and those lips… remembering Tony's lips was the death-blow, every time. I could drive the rest of him out of my memory, but that smart mouth of his — God help me, what I wouldn't give to shut him up! With a punch or a kiss, didn't really matter which as far as the hot pulse of my blood was concerned.

Sometimes he crept up on me late at night. Sometimes he pounced first thing in the morning: I'd be just about to pull on a t-shirt and would suddenly catch myself studying own reflection in the mirror — pausing, naked from the waist up, to consider myself full-front and then in profile: narrow waist and hips, sculpted abs, broad smooth chest, broader shoulders topped with a solid column of neck muscle… and wondering: _Would he like that? Would the sight of me get him as hot and bothered as —_

I always stopped that train of thought right there, pulling the rest of my clothes on with brisk efficiency, deliberately not looking at myself anymore. Didn't stop me from feeling Tony's eyes on me though, making me suddenly and intensely aware of every square inch of the body the media of my home decade had idolized... _Am I man enough for him? Enough to turn his head?_

_Enough to make him think about me the same way I think about —_

It was crazy, impossible: I hadn't taken the time to do any Google searches about his relationship history, but I knew his reputation as a womanizer and that he seemed pretty settled with Virginia "Pepper" Potts. His SHIELD dossier had told me that much, but I wanted to know so much more: all the things that were off the public record, the stuff that a guy could only learn from whispers in a dark room, one on one. I could search for a hundred years and never know what mattered to him —

_— but if I just asked him —_

The thought of where that conversation would go made me cringe inside. I already had enough of Tony stuck in my head: I didn't need to add his howls of disbelief to the mix too. So I put up with each night's persistence of memory, and did what I could to lose myself in the hum of wheels on tarmac the rest of the time. 

I deliberately didn't use the speed dial function on my phone to give him a call, even though someone — maybe him, maybe JARVIS — had managed to put his number at the top of the list. If I couldn't stop obsessing about the fire, at least I could stop my hands from reaching into it and suffering third degree burns.

I've gotta admit, though: those summer nights felt damned cold, every single one of them.


	10. Dream a Little Dream of Me

A neon-lit truck stop outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Beyond the big glass windows, above the semi rigs lined up in the parking lot, ranks of heavy grey thunderheads were advancing from the south across an early evening sky already dimmed by high cloud cover. All the tables were crowded with working class guys and women wearing cheap hairdos, except for the one where I sat, alone, picking at a slice of down-home apple pie and staring into the dregs of my third cup of coffee.

_Home_. I was heading back to New York City, but the word didn't seem to fit the modern place NYC had become… and if I couldn't call that _home,_ then where was I supposed to go? Over to Europe, where Nazis were threatening to rise again? The Council of Europe probably wouldn't appreciate Captain America stepping into their mess, and NATO might have some choice words to say as well. Down to the Middle East? Iron Man had already put out most of the fires there, and the sudden appearance of a guy dressed in red, white and blue would only add more gasoline to the mix. Or I could resign my Army commission: I had more than enough back pay racked up to buy a little farm somewhere, stock it with whatever I wanted, and retire from public life… but Erskine hadn't given me the gift of the serum just to sit on my ass raising chickens, so that option was out too. 

Or maybe I could take Fury up on the offer he hadn't actually made yet: officially join the Avengers Initiative as team leader. Travel the world under SHIELD's covert banner, crushing the enemies of Freedom, righting wrongs… and seeing Tony Stark's face every day, rugged and cheerful and angry and determined, the many moods of his agile mouth framed by that sartorial beard-and-moustache combo that should have looked ridiculous but only made me want to lean in and rub my lips against it, just to see how intense the magnetism between our mouths would really be…

Which made the Initiative the worst idea I'd seen yet, but still my mind kept coming back to it, like a dog with a bone full of rotten but tasty marrow. When the waitress swept over to refill my coffee cup I only offered her a half-smile, because I was pretty damned distracted by the memory of Tony's lips — not to mention his forearms, sturdy and powerful and dusted with fine black hairs, and his hands… strong capable hands, with fingers that looked good wrapped around a wrench or pressed against my abs, the firm heat of his palm running down my skin, trailing lower while he leaned up to give me a taste of all that electricity and steel —

— and just like that, the lights went out.

I sat there for a couple of seconds, blinking in the blackness and the silence — all the background noise of a busy truck stop, the conversations and the shouted orders and the country music and the growl and chuff of engines outside, was gone as if it had never been. Likewise the smells of pie and coffee and sweat and perfume, and when I leaped to my feet there was no clatter of the fork dropping from my fingers, and no table to get in the way of my thighs. I was standing in a void — but when I said "Hello?" the word rang loud and clear in my own ears, so at least I knew I hadn't been stricken deaf.

I took a step forward. There was definitely a surface under my feet, smooth and hard against the soles of my sneakers, something that briefly reflected the faint flash of emerald light that flared a few yards away on my left side. When I glanced in that direction with every sense on high alert and every nerve in my body keyed to charge or to dodge, it took me a second to fully register what I was seeing: a pale narrow face, a thin mocking smirk, and eyes as green as poison. 

The last face I'd ever expected to see, because it was supposed to be in a prison cell halfway across the galaxy, chained up tight in the depths of Asgard.

Loki Laufeyson: tall and proud, clad in a tight-fitting uniform of ebony leather and sable velvet, all cool elegance and undiminished malice and the smell of crazy like ozone after a lightning strike.

"Steven," he purred, then paused and cocked his head like a bird. "It _is_ Steven, isn't it?"

"It's Captain to you," I replied smartly, turning to face him squarely with the full breadth of my leather jacketed shoulders, both fists clenched at my sides. 

The incline of that pointed chin became apologetic. " _Captain_ , then." His voice was low, almost mild… but I'd seen that glitter in his eyes before, framed by a snake's scales. "I hope I'm not intruding."

"How did you get here?" I glanced around at the featureless night he'd pulled me into. "Wherever 'here' is…"

"Oh, I have my ways." He moved closer, black against blackness, only his face and his hands floating like venomous flowers in the gloom. "I'm a great deal older than you can comprehend, and I've learned any number of useful tricks over the centuries."

"Fine." I looked him straight in the eyes again. He'd tip his hand sooner or later, and when he made that mistake… "What do you want?"

Now he looked disappointed. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a singularly direct individual? To the point of rudeness, in fact?"

"I figure I don't owe you anything," I countered, "least of all politeness."

"Actually, you owe me a great deal." The smile was back, revealing sharp white teeth. "Were it not for me you would never have met any of your future teammates: the lovely Widow-maker, the sharp-eyed Hawk, the Doctor meek and mild… my dear, oafish, self-assured brother… and of course, the Man of Iron."

The glide of his tongue over that last name made the short hairs stand up on the back of my neck: _That's not for you to speak, you have no right, keep the fuck away from him you murderous bastard —_ "Who you threw out a window."

An elegant shrug. "He angered me. He really shouldn't have done that."

"You tried to take over his mind."

"For his own good," Loki retorted, with the air of someone dismissing a pointless topic of conversation. "But he's not the one I wish to discuss."

"Then why'd you bring him up?"

"Oh, Captain…" The smile widened, bright and nasty. "I'm not the one who's been thinking about him every day… and most especially, every night."

The prickle of rising hairs became a chill of horror creeping up my spine. "What're you —?"

"Don't try to lie to me." Those green eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't _ever_ lie to me. I am the King of Lies, and I won't tolerate anyone else usurping my royal prerogative."

"A King." I stared at him in disbelief rapidly turning to scorn — and contempt. "Sure — a 'king' who led his army to utter defeat, who lost everything, and who's currently rotting in a cell while the team that defeated him is building a better and brighter world than the one he tried — and failed — to destroy. The only person you're lying to is yourself, so why don't you just —"

Instead of looking put out, or angry, Loki's expression turned pleased — and sly. "If I've been so straitly imprisoned, my good warrior, then tell me — how am I here, with you, now? In a domain of my own creation?" Another step closer, his eyes gleaming with great good humour. "And how am I aware that _he_ thinks of _you_ , as well? Every day, and every night?"

"You're —" The stern accusations derailed in my throat, piling up in a choking mass as what he'd said hit me — a lot harder than I would've wanted it to.

"Ah." He was relishing every syllable now, loving the sound of his own voice and drinking in the sight of what his words were doing to me. "You didn't know that, did you? But you'd hoped, you'd _dreamed_ that his mouth yearns for yours, that he longs to write love's poetry on your skin with his fingers, that he wonders if you hunger as he hungers, if you burn as he burns!" Another step, the _click_ of his boot against the floor as sharp as a crow's claw. "He considers you a fool on a fool's errand, a man too good for a vastly fallen world — yet he would make you his own Champion, if you'd have him." Each word was the curl of a whip, hissing and lashing into my mind. "His lady love is on the verge of forsaking him, for the sake of the danger he courts. Soon he will be free, and he'd gladly take you to his bed and to his body, if only you'd unlace the armour of your own impenetrable virtue."

I could feel that all the blood had drained from my face, leaving my cheeks as white and as cold as his own. "That's…"

"… a lie?" This smile was almost kind. "Let me tell you a secret, Captain: a good lie is a lethal blade in the right hands, but on occasion the truth is a much surer poison." A bitter bark of laugher. "And far more entertaining to watch, let me assure you…"

He was walking backwards, going away, but my own feet seemed rooted to the floor. I couldn't even unclench my fists. I could only stare as the angles of his body began to blur and fade into the blackness, and fight to speak a few hard-won words: "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Why?" His lilting tones mocked me as he dissolved into the shadows. "Why indeed… _ask him_ … ask him yourself…"

I tried to tear myself free, to chase him down and wring some answers out of him — but as the last trace of him vanished the void burst open and light and life and sound poured back in on me again, surrounding me where I sat on a cracked red vinyl booth seat, a cup of untouched coffee grown cold in front of me and my slice of apple pie still barely touched. 

I stared at my hands, clenching and unclenching on the chipped formica table top, and I couldn't stop shivering. Outside, the ragged sky opened up with a dull cannonade of thunder and a cold grey storm washed down over the wide dirty world.

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
